Recommended movie: <i>Elite Squad</i> and especially the sequel <i>Elite Squad: Enemy Within</i>.<p>It's about BOPE, the special operations unit of Rio de Janeiro police. The first is about the military anti-gang exploits, the second is a good hard look at what corruption looks like. The drugs aren't going away if you break up a cartel, neither is the money.
How much cocaine can you dissolve in gasoline-based/like solvents to smuggle and then reconstitute? How much cash can you smuggle in the middle of a fuel tanker?<p>How easily/efficiently can oil companies launder money?<p>Why is no one addressing the seemingly obvious truth that the entire world is nothing but a complex corrupt criminal system of lies? Or am I just far too cynical?
I always wondering how the US managed to tame the Mafia in the early 20s to late 70s. Is there something the Mexican government can mimic or is there something either political or cultural that prevents this?
> “This guy grabs his phone and dials up the general. For $50,000 and 50 kilos of marijuana, they let him go. He also gave up 10,000 pesos he had on his person. That’s how it works with los militares.”
This story collapses a lot of popular narratives.<p>That peoples in USA buying drugs are the drivers of violence in Mexico.<p>That legalizing drugs would make the cartels and the violence disappear.
Mexico, along with Russia, are the two most notorious mafia states. And notice the problems have been getting worse as the amount of oil diminishes, which was predicted. This, on our own doorstep, cannot be contained and will affect our own country. There will be even more refugees, too, because of this.
"The armed conflict between the cartels and Mexico’s military, which has dragged on for 12 years, now ranks as the deadliest war in the world apart from Syria."<p>Do people still voluntarily go on holiday in Mexico?